Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor upbraided a federal prosecutor Monday for asking racially-charged questions in court.
The justices almost never elaborate on cases they decline to hear, but Sotomayor took the unusual step of issuing a statement condemning the prosecutor, whom she did not name.
She said the prosecutor “tapped into a deep and sorry vein of racial prejudice that has run through the history of criminal justice in our nation.”
The case at hand came from a drug arrest in Texas. The defendant took a road trip with friends and said he did not know they were planning a drug deal.
The prosecutor in the case invoked racial stereotypes in questioning the defendant’s explanation.
“You’ve got African Americans, you’ve got Hispanics, you’ve got a bag full of money. Does that tell you — a light bulb doesn’t go off in your head and say, This is a drug deal?” the prosecutor asked.
Sotomayor harshly criticized the questioning in a statement sharing the African Americans’s decision not to hear an appeal from the defendant.
“Such conduct diminishes the dignity of our criminal justice system and undermines respect for the rule of law,” Sotomayor wrote. “We expect the government to seek justice, not to fan the flames of fear and prejudice.”
Justice Stephen Breyer joined her statement.
The court rejected an appeal in the case on technical grounds. Sotomayor said she agreed with that decision, noting that the defendant’s lawyers limited their ability to appeal by not initially objecting to the prosecutor’s questioning during the trial.
Sotomayor also criticized the Justice Department for downplaying the prosecutor’s remark and acknowledging too late that it was inappropriate.
“I hope never to see a case like this again,” Sotomayor said.
The incarceration rate for African-Americans is so high that young black men without a high school diploma are more likely to go to jail than to find a job, thereby causing the breakup of families and instilling further poverty upon them.
“Prison has become the new poverty trap,” Bruce Western, a Harvard sociologist, told the New York Times. “It has become a routine event for poor African-American men and their families, creating an enduring disadvantage at the very bottom of American society.”
While few would argue against locking up murderers and rapists, many social scientists have begun to discuss the problem of imprisoning too many people – especially when those people face long sentences for nonviolent crimes. The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world, locking up about 500 people for every 100,000 residents, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
The incarceration rate for African-Americans is about 3,074 per 100,000 residents, which is more than six times as high as the national average. Black men in their 20s and early 30s without a high school diploma are particularly vulnerable: with an incarceration rate of 40 percent, they are more likely to end up behind bars than in the workforce, Pew Charitable Trusts reports.
“The collateral costs of locking up 2.3 million people are piling higher and higher,” said Adam Gelb, director of the Public Safety Performance Project of the Pew Center on the States. “Corrections is the second fastest growing state budget category, and state leaders from both parties are now finding that there are research –based strategies for low-risk offenders that can reduce crime at far less cost than prison.”
But while the cost of keeping prisoners might be high for government, the cost is even higher for African-Americans – especially to poverty-stricken families who lose a relative to the penal system. The Times interviewed parents Carl Harris and Charlene Hamilton, whose daughters grew up without a father. Mr. Harris, a crack dealer who received a 20-year prison sentence at the age of 24, was forced to abandon his family when he was locked up.
Unable to help out with the accumulating bills that come with raising children, Hamilton and her daughters ended up homeless on several occasions. Struggling to pay the rent and cover the costs of food, Hamilton also fought to pay for the out-of-state visits to see her daughters’ father.
“Basically, I was locked up with him,” she told the Times. “My mind was locked up. My life was locked up. Our daughters grew up without a father.”
And the couple’s story is not unique: 25 percent of African-Americans who grew up in the past three decades have had at least one parent locked up during their childhood, according to Project Muse. Police have more meticulously cracked down on crime and courts have imposed harsher sentences since 1980, causing the number of Americans – especially blacks – in state and federal prisons to quintuple.
And some believe that certain crimes shouldn’t merit sentences as harsh as the US imposes. Police never caught Mr. Harris dealing drugs, but arrested him for assaulting two people at a crack den. The man is now facing a 20-year sentence for charges including assault, in which he “broke someone’s arm and cut another one in the leg”, as well as a charge of ‘armed burglary’ at the crack den.
“The cops knew I was selling but couldn’t prove it, so they made up the burglary charge instead,” Mr. Harris told the Times.
The high incarceration rate of African-Americans has a detrimental effect on the black community. Epidemiologists have linked high incarceration rates to an increase in sexually transmitted diseases and teenage pregnancy, since the majority of those incarcerated are men, leaving a prevalence of females and greater occurrences of unprotected sex.
“A man will have three mistresses, and they’ll each put up with it because there are no other men around,” Hamilton said. Epidemiologists believe the AIDS rate among African-Americans would be lower if the incarceration rate dropped.
A high incarceration rate also affects children growing up without parents, brothers or sisters. Children are more likely to grow up impoverished, uneducated and emotionally strained. They are also more likely to become aggressive or depressed and could eventually end up in prison themselves.
“Education, income, housing, health – incarceration affects everyone and everything in the nation’s low-income neighborhoods,” Megan Comfort, a sociologist at RTI International, told the Times.
Since the incarceration rate is highest for African-Americans, it makes it more difficult for blacks to rise out of poverty, receive higher levels of education, and escape a life of crime. Young African-Americans are more often imprisoned than employed.
“The social deprivation and draining of capital from these communities may well be the greatest contribution our state makes to income inequality,” Dr. Donald Braman, a George Washington University Law School anthropologist, told the Times. “There is no social institution I can think of that comes close to matching it.”
While mass incarceration might temporarily reduce crime, in the long run, more Americans end up impoverished and more likely to commit a crime themselves. – RT
Idle No More is forcing many Canadians to be Willfully Blind No More.
Ostensibly, the movement spearheaded by Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence is about the protection of First Nations’ treaty rights. At its core, though, might be something more profound, perhaps best described as a demand for all of us in this country to re-think the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians. The relationship is, of course, an uneven one, though it might be far more uneven than most of us in this country care to acknowledge.
Against this backdrop, policy makers and average Canadians alike would be well advised to ring in the New Year by considering the lessons Michelle Alexander highlights in her important book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindedness. The context is American, but the lessons may hit closer to home. In the book, Alexander writes the following in regards to African-Americans and the United States’ criminal justice system:
“It is fair to say that we have witnessed an evolution in the United States from a racial caste system based entirely on exploitation (slavery), to one based largely on subordination (Jim Crow), to one defined by marginalization (mass incarceration). While marginalization may sound far preferable to exploitation, it may prove to be even more dangerous. Extreme marginalization, as we have seen throughout world history, poses the risk of extermination.”
It’s a narrative equally provocative and compelling. Alexander argues that Americans’ obsession with ‘law and order’ began as a conservative attempt to breed white opposition to the burgeoning civil rights movement. Politicians on the right labeled civil disobedience a precursor to criminality, and branded supporters of civil rights legislation as promoters of lawlessness. Exploiting the fears of poor and rural whites, Republican politicians invented and propagated the ‘War on Crime’ and, more specifically, the ‘War on Drugs’ as a means to incarcerate, and thus control, the black population.
The scheme was so successful that any politician that questioned the effectiveness or morality behind the supposedly colour-blind ‘War on Drugs’ was accused of being ‘soft on crime’ — the death knell for one seeking public office. In 1992, Bill Clinton recognized that Democrats could peel off right leaning white voters by outflanking the Republicans on issues like crime and welfare reform, and promptly advocated for a number of policies that resulted in the largest increases in federal and state prison inmates of any president in the history of the United States, the overwhelming majority of which were people of colour. The normalization of racial marginalization, according to Alexander, was finally, quietly complete.
The book is more than a lament; it’s a warning. Alexander paints a bleak portrait of a future in which the majority of African Americans — increasingly economically vulnerable in a nation of skyrocketing inequality — being under the control of the criminal justice system is not entirely inconceivable. It’s an ugly commentary on contemporary American society. Canadians should pay attention.
One in five Canadian prisoners are Aboriginal
Troublingly, there are significant parallels between the plight of African Americans in the United States, and the Aboriginal population in Canada.
As American history is steeped in institutional savagery toward African Americans, Canada’s history, too, is pockmarked by the white majority’s mistreatment of Indigenous peoples. Most notable among a litany of gross violations of justice are the permanent occupation of ancestral lands beginning in the 18th century, the noxious attempt to ‘civilize’ Aboriginal people in residential schools in the early 1900s, and the refusal to recognize Aboriginal Canadians as legal ‘persons’ until the middle of the 20th century. And the similarities, unfortunately, are not only historical.
Though Canada doesn’t yet lock up the same percentage of its citizenry as its southern neighbor — the most heavily incarcerated society in the world — measures passed by Prime Minister Harper’s Conservative government have resulted in a steady increase in the number of Canadians behind bars. Canadians of Aboriginal ancestries have borne the brunt of the surge of prisoners.
The proportion of African Americans and Aboriginal Canadians in prison far exceed their representation in the U.S. and Canada, respectively. In the U.S., black Americans account for 12 per cent of the total population, but represent nearly 40 per cent of the prison population. In Canada, Aboriginal peoples make up four per cent of the total population, but 20 per cent of the prison population.
These significant discrepancies are not shrinking. In the U.S., over 40 per cent of new offenders to state and federal prisons are African American. In Canada, more than one in five new admissions to men’s prisons are of Aboriginal descent. Among women offenders, over one in three are Aboriginal. In the U.S., one in three black men can expect to be incarcerated at some point in their lives. In Canada, young Aboriginal men are more likely to go to prison than complete a high school diploma. And once in custody, a significantly larger proportion of African American and Aboriginal Canadian prisoners are recommended for maximum levels of security than white prisoners charged with similar crimes.
Structural discrimination
While it might be unfair to claim that Canadian politicians and the Canadian criminal justice system have joined forces to consciously ensure that our Aboriginal communities remain repressed and disenfranchised, it cannot be denied that Aboriginals across the country suffer from poverty, injustice and lack of opportunity more than other type of Canadian. One in four Aboriginal children live in poverty.
The life expectancy for Indigenous people in Canada is eight to 20 years less than non-Aboriginal Canadians. On First Nations reserves, 60 per cent of children do not graduate high school, and the lack of suitable housing and access to clean water is endemic. To be Aboriginal in Canada today is to be a second-class citizen.
As a new year begins, we should take this opportunity to look closely at the society that we have created, and address the appalling inequalities of our criminal justice system. There is still time to prevent the prison state of our southern neighbors, but only if we hurry.
AUSTIN, Texas — Walking across the South Mall, or scanning the football stadium’s 100,000 seats on game day, University of Texas admissions Director Kedra Ishop sees how much has changed since the 1990s, when she was a black student at what was an inordinately white school.
This giant flagship campus — once so slow to integrate — is now awash in color, among the most diverse in the country. The student body, like Texas, is majority-minority.
At the dining hall, minority students no longer cluster together. Actually, it’s more a high-end food court now, and many tables are racial mosaics — white, black, Latino, Asian.
So is this the “critical mass” of minority students that the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly endorsed in 2003 as an educational goal important enough to allow colleges to factor the race of applicants into admissions decisions?
That question will be front and center Wednesday when a more conservative Supreme Court revisits affirmative action for the first time since that landmark case nine years ago involving the University of Michigan.
Abigail Fisher, who was denied admission to the University of Texas because of race preference
This time, it’s Texas defending the use of race in admissions, fighting a discrimination lawsuit from Abigail Fisher, a rejected white applicant. As it happens, the court’s decision will affect relatively few students at Texas, which admits most students through a system that doesn’t factor in race.
But a broad ruling rolling back affirmative action could be an earthquake at other campuses across the country that make more use of race, potentially changing the educational trajectories of millions of students.
For all the wrenching debates about opportunity and fairness the affirmative action debate evokes, the outcome will likely come down to how the current justices fill out the answer to questions they began to answer in 2003: What is critical mass, and how far can a university go to achieve it?
Generally, it’s the point where there’s enough diversity on campus to provide a rich educational environment. But beyond that, it’s a concept critics call maddeningly vague and supporters necessarily so. Is it enough for the student body to be diverse overall, or must all groups be well represented? What if there’s diversity in the student body, but not in most individual classrooms?
Texas will swallow its pride and argue that for all its progress, it’s still short of critical mass. Under state law, most UT students are admitted automatically based on their high school GPA, with race playing no role. But for the smaller remainder of its class where it enjoys more leeway, Texas argues it should be able to use race as a factor.
The reason: Some groups, especially blacks, remain underrepresented compared to Texas’ population. And minority students clump together academically, leaving most classes with no more than a single black or Latino voice.
But the university won’t give a target number, something the court would likely call an unconstitutional quota.
“There’s never been a discussion of ‘this is the target, this is what it looks like, this is where we’re trying to go,'” Ishop said. “We know what it doesn’t look like. And we know without the ability to examine students in their completeness that we can get back there very quickly.”
Such arguments sound mushy to UT’s opponents, who call the school’s goals for critical mass a quota in disguise. They say the university has gone too far using race in admissions, abusing the discretion the court granted colleges to define critical mass for themselves.
“It is a squishy concept that’s being manipulated,” said Terence Pell, president of the Center for Individual Rights, which argued against affirmative action in the Michigan case and has filed a brief against Texas in the current one. “It’s just sort of diversity for its own sake,” he added, “with no end and no limit.”
History’s role
History isn’t central to the legal issues in the affirmative action debate, but it’s an issue at UT-Austin. The football team didn’t integrate until 1970, and even as minority enrollment expanded, UT little resembled increasingly diverse Texas, leaving minority students feeling isolated.
“It was very seldom three or more were gathered,” said Machree Gibson, who arrived on campus in 1978, earned two degrees and later became the first black female president of the Texas Exes, the university’s powerful alumni group. “We used to joke, ‘Three in a room, we’re a gang.'”
Today, even a short drive through campus leaves Gibson amazed how things have changed.
But UT still doesn’t look like Texas. Of its 52,000 students, 5 percent are black (compared to 12 percent of the state population). Latinos make up 18 percent at UT (38 percent statewide) and Asians 15 percent (4 percent statewide).
Greek life and off-campus housing for upperclassmen remain mostly segregated — the West Campus neighborhood is mostly white, Riverside more black and Latino, and the Far West neighborhood Asian, limiting interactions. Academically, many departments have few non-white faces. Senior Kristin Thompson says she’s one of just two black female civil engineers in her class, despite aggressive recruiting. She’s found her community outside class, but her academic experience has been lonely.
“At UT we talk about what starts here changes the world, but I think we’re doing a disservice to students by not preparing them for a world that doesn’t have these demographics,” she said.
In the Michigan case nine years ago, psychologists, educators and, most influentially, the military flooded the court with briefs arguing a diverse learning environment helped prepare students —- whites and minorities —- for jobs and citizenship. Many also argued it takes a critical mass of minorities
How many? There was no magic number. But enough for minorities not to feel isolated in the classroom, and non-minorities to realize minorities’ views weren’t one-size-fits-all.
Those arguments persuaded Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the court’s key swing vote. In her majority opinion in the 5-4 case, she gave Michigan and other universities leeway to define critical mass in terms of their own educational goals, and to use race as a plus-factor in admissions to get there (O’Connor has since been replaced by Justice Samuel Alito, a strong affirmative action skeptic).
In Texas, a 1996 federal appeals court ruling had prohibited UT from using race in admissions, and black enrollment had plummeted. A year later, the Texas Legislature passed a “Top 10 percent” law, guaranteeing UT admission to any student at the top of his or her Texas high school.
The law was race-neutral, but it boosted the number of minorities — by some measures, close to current figures. To UT’s opponents, that proves UT can reach ample diversity — even “critical mass” — without resorting to racial preferences.
But UT says the diversity produced by the 10 percent law was stilted. Ninety percent of smaller classes had one or zero blacks, and 43 percent no more than one Latino. A student survey found minorities felt isolated, and a majority of all students felt there weren’t enough minorities for “the full benefits of diversity to occur.”
The university wanted leeway to recruit more minorities with different interests, to ensure fields such as geosciences, architecture and Thompson’s civil engineering had a critical mass, not just the campus overall.
So for the relatively small portion of its class — currently about one-quarter — not admitted automatically by their high school performance, UT designed a system to mimic what the court had allowed in the Michigan case. In that second system UT emphasizes race is a small factor, among many “special circumstances” that may be considered. It’s also not automatic, and could benefit any applicant, even a white one in some cases.
Both sides acknowledge the effect of race in UT’s system is modest (Fisher contends race is decisive for just 33 additional minority enrollees per year). To UT, that shows race is used along the limited lines the court has allowed. To Fisher, it shows that UT doesn’t need to use race at all.
On campus, critical mass evokes a range of responses. Jesse Hernandez, a senior who attended a virtually all-Latino high school in the Rio Grande Valley, says its benefits include generating a vibrant multicultural social life. Latino cultural groups, and fraternities and sororities, help minorities find a community at a huge school, but also benefit the broader student body by sharing their culture on campus.
Thompson, the civil engineering student, says she’ll recognize critical mass “when there are less racial incidents on campus, when students feel like they can go anywhere on campus and feel welcome, can go anywhere and speak their mind and not feel like they’re going to be chastised for it, ridiculed for it, looked at crazy,” she said. She loves UT, but says it’s not there yet.
“To me that’s the end goal: a welcoming campus, not a quantity of students.”
Senior Jordan Grenadier’s experience has been different.
“I don’t ever feel like I walk on campus or walk into a classroom and only see one particular type of people,” said Grenadier, who leads the campus chapter of the group Young Conservatives of Texas. On West Mall, where student groups set up tables, “it’s so diverse whenever you walk down there, it’s almost hard to imagine the university saying ‘that’s not good enough.'”
The question isn’t “whether or not (diversity) is important,” she said. “It’s, ‘Is it justified? Can someone who is qualified to attend the university not get accepted because someone who is maybe not as qualified gets in because of racial preferences?'”
UT-Austin’s president, Bill Powers, who agrees critical mass is the “central question” in the case, says UT isn’t just saying “we’ll know it when we see it.” He says “analytics,” such as classroom diversity surveys, will show UT if it’s successfully preparing students to live and work in a diverse world.
“Right now, African-Americans and Hispanics are underrepresented,” Powers said in an interview in his library-like office on campus. “We’ll reach a critical mass when you can (see it) both in the campus atmosphere and the milieu in individual classes. Not 100 percent, but where a sufficient number of individual classes bring this cross-cultural environment.”
“It really is going to hinge on what lens the court looks at the campus through,” said Gerald Torres, who says diversity is key to meaningful conversations about environmental justice in his law school courses. “Is it the lens of the classroom or is it the lens of the campus? If it’s the lens of the campus, then (the court) is likely to say the percentage increase of students of color under the 10 percent plan is sufficient. If they look at the classroom, I think they’ll say it’s not.”
Attorneys for Fisher, who sued Texas after she was denied admission to UT-Austin in 2008, contend that by even referencing the state’s demographics in its critical mass goals, UT is acknowledging a quota. They also argue the Supreme Court never intended to make diversity in every classroom the benchmark for critical mass.
“As long as you have a critical mass in the school as a whole, you’re going to bump into people in the dorms, in the all-night bull sessions,” Pell said. “That’s what’s going to give you the benefits of diversity. Now Texas says that’s not good enough, you have to have diversity in every corner of the university, in every classroom, every major.” – Associated Press
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Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor upbraided a federal prosecutor Monday for asking racially-charged questions in court.
